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Discendo Vox posted:What applicable elements didn't Halligan gently caress up? 404 Not Found
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Nov 21, 2025 18:33
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| # ? Dec 9, 2025 17:58 |
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Hey legal peoples: It sounds like my father in law has dementia. We think. Doctors are pretty sure, I guess; I don't know if there's any official diagnosis just yet, but there are certainly some memory issues at play. He's had some health complications lately, and his reaction to being hospitalized a few days ago was... not great, so the hospital is recommending following up specifically on that part. This is in addition some things we've all noticed recently that were previously chalked up to the various medication he's been on, but with hindsight and all it's kind of obvious. So the question right now is: what legal things can/should we do at this point that won't be immediately unwound by any sort of diagnosis? We have no reason to believe that anyone is going to pop up and challenge a POA or claim elder abuse, but... he has some assets, and you never know with these things. My wife has some cousins that she's been warned about in the past, so... you never know. He has a wife, who is still alive and mentally competent. What all do we/they need to do to protect him and his wife? There's been talk of his wife or someone getting a POA, but I don't know if that's a thing we can do here or not given his mental state. I don't know if everything is jointly owned, or if anything is in his name only, though. So I guess I don't know if there's any strict need for any legal stuff, or if her interest as his spouse is sufficient. Other things we're concerned about: driving and guns... lots of guns. He has... so many guns. Not sure if anyone but him knows where they all are, but he has always talked about how he has them hidden such that he's never more than a few yards from one at all times in his house. We would like to... safeguard them, of course, but this might be a challenge given his mental state. If he goes looking for them and doesn't find them, that might cause issues, and similarly if he gets paranoid and doesn't tell us where they all are, that's another issue. Of course the biggest concern is if he has an episode and still has access to them. Him not recognizing a family member or a neighbor is... a scary thought. So aside from probably making sure he doesn't drive anymore, securing his guns is probably top of the list, and I don't know what we need to do legally to make that happen. I mean I suppose a lot of dealing with this is more practical than legal, but I'm curious about what sort of legal things we may need to take care of in the near term. Is there a certain type of attorney we would want to talk to about this? I was under the impression that elder law tends to revolve around estate planning. I'm not sure if this is a subset of that, or if there's a different type of specialty we'd want to look for. He and his wife are in SC if it matters. We're not, but I would imagine anything that gets done will be in his wife's name, so that's probably where we'd want to be looking.
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Nov 23, 2025 02:01
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A good Estate or elder law attorney will have a check list of poo poo to do at, experience in those issues, and references to resources for common poo poo they see but dont handle
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Nov 23, 2025 03:12
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Elder law attorneys do estate planning, yes. They also do stuff like applying/planning for Medicaid, dealing with end of life care and setting things up for people that are likely to face problems like dementia. Here's a directory of certified elder law attorneys from the national elder law foundation, if it helps. https://www.nelf.org/attorney-directory-search
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Nov 23, 2025 03:47
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Your state bar will have an attorney referral program you can easily find by googling for a free or heavily discounted consultation. Go through them and either copy/paste your post or ask for an attorney who does guardianships (anyone who does this will also be able to assess if a less restrictive alternative like a POA is appropriate and be able to direct on investigating and safeguarding assets).
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Nov 23, 2025 12:59
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OK cool, thanks. The past few days have been... interesting. I don't know why it didn't dawn on me that this is probably a very standard situation... so hopefully whoever we find has everything we need. Also not sure why guardianship didn't occur to me. Probably a tad more appropriate than a POA. Kind of on that, would his wife actually need some legal authority to access anything that's only in his name? I'm guessing the biggest thing would be retirement accounts that would need to be regularly accessed. I guess I don't know if she has any special access by virtue of being his spouse, or if she's treated as no different from a random stranger. p.s. do attorneys at cities near state borders typically get licensed in the adjacent state? Looks like there's a NELF certified attorney right across the state border from my in-laws, but their website doesn't say anything about practicing out of state, which I assume they would want to advertise. Otherwise the nearest in-state attorney is over an hour away.
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Nov 24, 2025 02:19
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| # ? Dec 9, 2025 17:58 |
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Yeah that's fairly normal. Call them up and ask, the first person you talk to will know if/which attorneys are also for your state
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Nov 24, 2025 02:35
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